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Compassion ‒ universal love.
Opening your heart to an often scared and ungrateful galaxy that lashed out constantly. Keeping your soul kind and giving, when your every instinct screamed at you to build walls and hold on to what was yours. A Jedi’s life was defined by this daily struggle, this complete renouncement of a sentient’s right to selfishness. Mace had wrestled with himself for decades to cultivate this gentleness that didn’t always come naturally, and often tasted bittersweet, but could only be worth it in the end. He had failed sometimes, too often perhaps, but never given up his commitment to the Force and its light, and never surrendered himself to apathy and greed.
When the blow fell – when the Republic he had taught himself to love for its people and its ideals turned to ashes before his very eyes, too fast for the devastation to fully be grasped – he wished he had lost his way like so many others. Pain like he had never known pierced his very spirit, tore his chest apart – sorrow for the trillions of beings whose freedom was being stolen, horror, fear, the agonized screams of thousands of beings just like him being snuffed out across the stars. And all of this for what?
Betrayal, loss, suffering – he knew them all intimately. He knew that they bred helplessness, rage and hate. And in that moment – suspended between life and death, freefalling towards the Cosmic Force, open to the Galaxy’s every breath and heartbeat – Mace hated.
And he wished, dearly wished, prayed fervently that he could have closed himself off earlier. That he could have made himself heartless, as hard on the inside as his stone-like face. He wished he had loved no Republic, no Order and no brethren in the Force – had loved none of the brave soldier boys who had taught him as much as any Padawan of his.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand what was unfolding – but he could feel, and he didn’t want to.
Reaching out, clawing at the darkness that sought to drag him down, he struggled desperately. No! His soul screamed, his light flickering, suffocated by despair and terror’s numberless arms. He reflexively wrenched himself free of the decayed limbs, stumbled away blindly only to be caught again and again. Each star that got snuffed out was another stab through his exposed heart. Careless, so careless. They should have drawn inward. Should have built fortresses. Plated their Temple with durasteel and cortosis and kept the world out, instead of bleeding out on forgotten battlefields.
He followed the arms into the abyss. His bones shattered like clari-crystal. Impossibly – or so he’d always thought – his core of kyber shattered too. Brokenly, he dragged himself along the sharp edges – let the shards of ten thousand dead stars slice open his flesh – and he looked up. The world was a void. Colorless, shapeless, skyless. Beauty and peace and kindness were all gone, and compassion had been snuffed out. High above, enthroned upon lies and deceit was the Sith crowned supreme victor, reveling in his depravity. He grinned at the destruction and the horror. At his feet was a field of ashes and dead bodies, and he toyed with broken lives that cried and begged. In his hand, he held the leashes of millions of bound minds, enslaved to his boundless bloodlust.
His eyes found Mace.
“And it so ends, Master Jedi. At long last, the will of the Force is made manifest,” the Sith gloated.
It couldn’t be true. Frantically looking around for light, for hope, for any sign that it wasn’t over, Mace could find nothing. He choked on the darkness that filled his lungs. The poison from the Sith’s lips dripped down, each droplet splashing onto his heart and sizzling.
“If the Force hadn’t wanted this,” Sidious murmured, “would I have won?”
In his agony, Mace had no answer.
But as he turned his gaze to his mutilated soul, he caught a glimpse of a broken crystal that still gleamed. He closed his bleeding hand over this little light that pulsed weakly. It was warm, but each spasm of Mace’s hatred threatened its fading life.
“I still have a choice,” he told the void, hunched over this sliver of warmth.
To choose pain over oblivion, defiant light over bitter despondency. He could still fight, struggle, cling to the last bit of himself that longed for goodness – it hurt, it was pathetic and pointless, but he would do it, because he had never surrendered in his existence and never would. He would spit at this creature’s empire of death and refuse to let himself be tainted. He didn’t have Plo’s gentle nature, Obi-Wan’s resilient humor or Yoda’s wisdom, but he had his own strength and stubbornness.
He wanted to hate, so badly, but he wouldn’t.
Just because he could.
Mace dragged himself to his feet haggardly, that precious light safe in his hand.
“There is no death,” he told the darkness, rejecting its lies, “there is only the Force.”
The darkness screeched and flailed behind him, and he stepped away, embracing serenity.